Monday 4 October 2010 02.00 EDT
First published on Monday 4 October 2010 02.00 EDT

Two presenters on multi-million pound salaries, an expensive new set, a host of fresh faces and a ratings slump that shows no sign of ending. Daybreak, ITV's expensive breakfast programme, is not proving a bright new dawn for the broadcaster's new management.

New figures seen by the Guardian confirm that the show, fronted by Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, is now watched by fewer viewers than its predecessor GMTV at the same point last year.

An average of 3.2 million viewers watched the show in its third week, a 19.7% audience share. That is the same as the previous week, but 4.7 points down on GMTV's 24.4% share in the equivalent week of September 2009.

Crucially the figures from the ratings body Barb also reveal Daybreak's audience of stay-at-home parents with children, on which its appeal to advertisers depends, has fallen significantly compared with GMTV's performance last year. In the week beginning 20 September, Daybreak had a 23.7% share of parent viewers, down 6.6 percentage points on the equivalent week in 2009 – a 20% fall. BBC Breakfast achieved a 19.6% share.

Freefall period

That demographic is crucial for ITV's early morning show. BBC Breakfast overtook GMTV in the ratings at the end of 2006, but a far higher proportion of parents continue to tune in to ITV. Now that gap is closing.

"Audiences are definitely deserting it," says one industry source. "Daybreak is averaging less than GMTV did when it died. That's bad … They are in that freefall period at the moment."

An ITV spokesman dismisses such concerns, saying: "Daybreak has made a strong start in a very competitive breakfast television market, with viewing figures for its first three weeks up on the average for GMTV [for the year to the end of August] and positive feedback on the new show from our viewers.

"ITV has made a long term investment in new breakfast programming and, after over five years of decline for GMTV, we look forward to building on this start."

A month after Daybreak debuted on 6 September, Ladbrokes is already offering odds of 4/1 that ITV will dispense with the services of one or both of its presenters before Christmas. It even has odds of 100/1 that Roland Rat, credited with saving TV-am, one of Daybreak's predecessors, will return to salvage the format.

The same industry source blames ITV management for its poor performance so far and for spending an estimated £10m on luring Chiles from the BBC and persuading Bleakley, his former co-presenter on The One Show, to join him.

"Time and again executives think that getting the presenters in is all you need to do – they spend all the money on … getting the 'dream team'," he says.

Industry executives criticise Daybreak for being an early-morning equivalent of The One Show, the evening magazine programme commissioned by ITV's director of television, Peter Fincham, when he was the controller of BBC1. Fincham and ITV's director of daytime, Alison Sharman, are accused of creating a slow-paced daytime show that lacks energy and immediacy, in part because there are fewer reporters on the ground.

"It's too studio-based," says another industry source. "They're spending all the cash on the money shots [of Chiles and Bleakley] … By now it should be bedding down and people should be saying: 'give it a chance'."

Some in the industry still are. David Kermode, who was BBC Breakfast's editor until 2007 and now edits Five News, says: "New things take time to settle. The show they have in three months' time will be very different from the one they have now." He adds: "It's difficult for them. It takes quite a lot of time to change things in telly and it takes viewers a lot of time to notice. I was at BBC Breakfast for three years and it took a year to close the gap on GMTV."

If the ratings trend continues it could cost ITV dear. It will also inflict reputational damage on a company that is beginning to rediscover its confidence following the arrival of its new chairman, Archie Norman, and new chief executive, Adam Crozier, in April.

Kermode says: "We did quite a lot of changes at BBC Breakfast but the key thing was to make it a show that connected with its audience. We brought on a really great presenting duo in Bill [Turnbull] and Sian [Williams]. They are a formidable double act."

The Radio 4 presenter Justin Webb, who presented BBC Breakfast from 1992 to 1997, says: "In my day the audience was pretty low but an insight into who was watching was when I went to the Costa del Sol to see my mum, who lived there, and was mobbed in the streets by elderly Brits carrying copies of the weekly Daily Express. It was like being Mick Jagger for an hour … The modern programme has widened its appeal. Personally I think Bill Turnbull is a real star – he's bright and witty and far more engaging than his overpaid opposition."

Buying in Chiles and Bleakley, a ready-made and established duo, may yet prove successful, but there are already signs that Daybreak's producers are changing the show around them.

Flowers have appeared on the coffee table and the show has a slightly softer feel as it attempts to replicate some of the warmth that GMTV exuded.

GMTV brand

"They killed off the GMTV brand rather too enthusiastically," says one TV executive. "It had become lazy but even ITV loyalists would admit it knew what it was. Daybreak doesn't."

A showbiz agent with close links to the show questions whether viewers can relate to Bleakley now that she is an millionaire with a footballer boyfriend, who has shed her "girl next door" image. "The point about GMTV is that audiences felt the presenters were their friends."

They dreaded receiving a call to see ITV bosses. One was delighted to be summoned to discuss his future at the programme editor's office, only to be told by a confused PA on arrival to take the lift to the sixth floor instead.

Salvation may come from an even more unlikely source – the BBC itself. BBC Breakfast's hastily announced move to Salford next year is expected to lead to departures.

Webb says that breakfast TV in the US is far more established than it is in the UK and that British audiences have proved more resistant to the idea than many predicted.

"I once bounded up to Douglas Hurd at a party conference and asked him if he could come on the following morning. Hurd replied 'Television? In the morning?'. He was genuinely anguished that civilisation had sunk so low."

Daybreak is too big to be allowed to fail, but it may yet sink a little further. If so, perhaps ITV can take solace from the fact that breakfast television has never taken off over here as it did in the US.

Chris Evans's show on Radio 2 has around 8.5 million listeners, more than the morning terrestrial TV shows combined, and the Today programme regularly tops 6 million. "Radio's still the thing," says Webb. "The nation is with Douglas Hurd on this."